


Severing

by Fyre



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scenes, Multi, no really aaaaaaaaaaaaaangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7630021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone deals with loss in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Severing

**Author's Note:**

> I have been advised to warn that this is not a happy story. This is A-level angst. Do not read if you are having a bad day and want to be diverted from it. This is your two minute warning.

Every moment that passed felt like a waking nightmare.

James had stood on the deck, watching as London vanished behind them until it was nothing more than a dark speck on the horizon. It was the perfect weather, the wind caught in the sails, carrying them far from the city. Far from Thomas.

Every day of the voyage thus far had been the same. Miranda remained in the cabin. He stayed on the deck. They only saw one another when they ate and slept, and even then, they spoke little. There was nothing that could be said to make things better.

Christ, he should never have left. He should never have gone to the admiralty. After everything he’d seen in Nassau, he should have begged Thomas to reconsider. Maybe then, they could all have been happy and safe and…

He brought his fist down on the railing, snarling a curse under his breath. Again and again until his skin split and his fist was bloody and aching. He heard running feet behind him. They thought him mad, he knew. They had since he stood through the first day and night and stared at the horizon as if it could bring him back to London.

He was panting and dripping with blood when he was done.

“James.”

He didn’t turn at Miranda’s voice. “We should never have left him there.”

“I know.” 

He whipped around furiously. “You know? You _know_? You were the one who said we had to leave.”

She looked placidly back at him. No. Not placid. Blank. Empty. Her face was ashen. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He had the tempest within him, but she had raged and stormed where no one could see, keeping her anger and grief to herself. She approached him, taking the careful steps of someone who had never been at sea before.

When she laid her hand on his arm, it was as gently as if he was a skittish colt.

“We should not have left him,” she said quietly, “but if we had stayed, you would have felt the pinch of a noose before sunset, and I…” She looked down at her hand on his sleeve. Her nails – usually so neat and perfect – were broken. She raised her eyes to his face and smiled mirthlessly. “Well, there are many fates for a known whore. I doubt Alfred would have been delicate about it.”

James wanted to weep and rage and burn the whole city to dust. “I’m going to kill him.” The words came out in a guttural snarl, barely human. “I don’t know how, but I swear to God, I will see him dead for what he did.”

Miranda’s fingers tightened on his arm. “I know and he will deserve it.”

He looked at her then, truly looked. She had struck him with her words when he had been told about Thomas, showing a fury he had not imagined in her. If she could contain so much, he did not doubt she was feeling Thomas’s loss as much – if not more – than he was. 

“Come below,” she murmured. “You should rest.”

“I can’t.”

She slipped her fingers between his. “And I cannot be alone. Please, James.”

Their cabin was small, close, but sufficient. While she had a small bunk to sleep on, James had a hammock that was rolled and slung in the corner. Miranda sat down on the bunk, looking towards the small porthole. James reluctantly picked up some linens from her bag to stem the bleeding from his hand.

“When Thomas first married me,” she murmured, “I played the proper wife. Did he tell you that?”

James shook his head. They all spoke of many things, but when he was with Thomas, it felt somehow inappropriate to discuss the nature of Thomas’s marriage. 

Miranda gloried in it, all but thrusting her husband and his virtues and vices on James, to have someone else to celebrate him. Thomas, though, had a sweet shyness about it all. Hoarding his little secrets, he once called it. Treasuring the moments like a miser and his gold. James had laughed, but now, he realised how many little things he had missed in doing so.

“I thought it… better, for fear of repelling him.” She smiled sadly, leaning back against the wall of the cabin. “Thomas could tell that I was playing a part. He always appreciates… appreciated honesty in all things.”

“He does,” James agreed. He sat down on the small stool on the opposite side of the cabin, mirroring her position. He could not face using the past tense, not while Thomas yet lived. Alfred might free him now that they were gone. He could hope and pray that it would be so. He folded his arms over his chest. “How did he remove the mask?”

“As he did with you and I.” She was looking up at the small lamp that swung from the ceiling and her eyes were brighter again. “He brought a handsome man into our home. He knew I… had desires he could not satisfy, but knew I would never complain. At first I rebuffed them, until he insisted that he was not testing me.” A smile softened her taut features. “He always knew me better than I knew myself.”

James had to look away from her. He had experienced that too, when those knowing, clever blue eyes saw through all the formalities and propriety and looked into the very heart of him. Thomas had seen him for who he was and had loved him for it.

He unwound the linen from his hands. His skin was cracked and still trickling with fresh beads of blood, but it was superficial. The pain helped. It brought things back into focus. There was so much they needed to do. There was so much he would have to put aside, in order to fulfil Thomas’s wishes.

James McGraw would be forgotten by all but Miranda, just as Miranda Hamilton would be nothing but a memory, a face in a portrait, a name whispered in gossip.

A strand of his hair brushed his cheek and he lifted his hand to sweep it back. A memory struck him as hard as a rod: Thomas’s fingers light on his skin, smoothing aside his hair and tracing his features as if committing his face to memory, then a sleepy observation that he was quite hairy and prickly by the dawn’s light. 

God above, they had laughed and he had chastised Thomas by scraping his stubble and shaking his hair all over his lover’s body, until they were both helpless with mirth at the ridiculousness of it all. It had all been so innocent. He had never had a lover who had teased him so and loved him so without mockery or doubt or ill-intent. Even Miranda had her own reasons for loving him, but Thomas simply… did.

His fingers twisted the strand of hair.

No more.

No more lazy mornings of books and fornication and fingers twisting into his hair as he lowered his mouth. No more quiet smiles as he tried to find his boots, while Thomas lounged like a cat and refused to say where they were. No more secret looks that made his heart race and his blood feel like it was boiling through his veins. 

Silently, he rose and went to his small trunk. He had little with him, but what he had would serve its purpose. He withdrew his knife from his belongings and reached up behind his head, grasping his ponytail in his fist.

“James…” Miranda began.

He jerked the blade up and the sheaf of hair came away in his hand. He looked down at it, wishing to Christ he had stolen Thomas away, that they had – all three – run off to the Indies together to wake in a warm and drowsy tangle of limbs far from London’s judgemental eyes. Wishing that Thomas was here to look at the mess James had made of himself and, lips twitching, gently suggest that they find a barber to make improvement.

“James,” Miranda said again, her voice shaking.

“He liked my hair,” James said blankly, staring at it. It seemed so insignificant. A clump of hair. Hardly anything at all. He tightened his fingers around it. Christ, did she think he was trying to cut the memories away? Was he? He didn’t know. He only knew his chest was aching and his eyes were wet and Christ, he wanted to be home, listening to Thomas talking about anything and smiling that beautiful smile that made the world feel brighter and better.

Miranda was suddenly beside him and her hand was around his. 

It felt like a dam had shattered, and his legs gave way, emotion driving him to his knees. The anger was there, but grief and pain were smothering him. Miranda knelt too, her arms tight around him, his port in a storm, and he clung to her as he wept. 

 

______________________________________________________

   
Miranda expected James at any moment.

Captain Flint, as he was now called, had been at sea for close to two weeks. There had been raids planned, more daring than the usual. Captain Flint had to be notorious, James insisted. He wanted the world to know that this pirate, this terror, was ravaging the Carolina colonies and the islands that fell within Alfred Hamilton’s purview. 

Within six months, he had gone from being a newcomer and outsider on Nassau to Captain of a crew that trusted and followed him. His skill was undeniable. His prizes were valuable. In barely four years, his name was already becoming legendary.

A boy had come from town only hour earlier to let her know that the Walrus had been sighted. 

Sometimes, James returned at once when the ship anchored. Sometimes, he lingered with his men and spoke with the Guthrie girl in the town. 

Miranda stared blindly at the guttering flames in the fireplace. It was already dark outside. She knew she ought to rise and light a candle, but she felt utterly drained. Three days of waiting since the courier arrived with a messenger. Three days since she opened the folded page and read and fell to her knees in the garden. Three days of numb, aching grief and no one who could understand. 

It was clenched in her fist now, the message. Part of her wanted to burn it before James returned, cast it into the flames, and let him hold on to his belief that one day Thomas might join them. This house that they lived in, humble as it was, was built for more than two people. There were beds enough for two pairs, room enough to share, even if they never has guests. 

James had never said why he had chosen this house for them – for her, in truth, given his perpetual absences – but she could read it in the way he would look at the empty room when he imagined she wasn’t looking. He lived in hope, and in hope he sometimes found a smile and a look for her that took her breath as it had so many months ago in London. 

God above, she wanted to destroy it and save that little spark of hope that was left, but he would hate her for it if she lied to him.

In the distance, she heard hoofbeats.

Only moments later, she heard the horse whickering outside the house, heard the footsteps approaching, and tried to gather the strength to turn. The door swung inwards, creaking on its hinges, and she caught the waft of salt and sweat and the scent of gunsmoke that was purely him.

“Still up?” He sounded merry and surprised. “I should have sent the boy ahead to let you know I would be late.” Something heavy was set down on the table. Another book, perhaps. Or some pilfered china from one of his captive ships. Little comforts he tried to bring to brighten their so-called home. “We had quite a time and Gates insisted I celebrate with them…”

It had been a long while since she had heard him so triumphant, which only made it harder to interrupt him. With effort, she pushed herself to her feet and turned to face him, as he unloaded his spoils from his saddlebag onto the table, talking all the while.

She didn’t speak.

That must have been the thing that alerted him, because he cut himself off in the middle of a tale of Gates and an incident with a new lad on the crew and looked at her. Framed against the fireplace, she knew her face must be invisible, but he knew her well enough to see in her stance, in her stillness.

“Miranda?”

Her feet felt weighted with lead. She took a slow step forward. The letter was in her hand. All she had to do was hand it to him. Let paper and ink bear the brunt of his grief. 

He moved towards her, but she held up her empty hand, halting him.

“Thomas is dead.”

He reared back as if she had slapped him. “No.”

She held out the letter. It shook in her hand. “Peter. He wrote.”

James stared at the letter as if it might burn him, then snatched it. He stumbled past her to the fire, tilting the page towards the dying light of the flames. She couldn’t bear to turn to see his face. That Thomas was dead was terrible enough, but to know that he had been driven to such despair that he had chosen to end his life was far, far worse. 

In all the years of their marriage, she had never known Thomas to give in to despair. He was warm, vital, and brilliant. Life was a gift, he always said. He was not a man who would open his wrists or put a cord around his own neck. For him to do so, for him to have fallen so far, spoke of a torment far beyond anything she had dared to imagine.

And James…

James was naïve in his optimism, believing that Alfred would grant Thomas his freedom, that surely no man would be so unnecessarily cruel to his own son.

She heard the stifled sound of pain.

“It’s not true.” His voice sounded like that of a stranger. “Thomas would never-”

“It’s from Peter,” she interrupted quietly. “Why would he lie to us?” 

She heard him tear the paper once, twice, three times. She heard the snap as the flames caught it, fresh kindling, and smelled the scent of burning parchment.

James stumbled from the kitchen as one blind, groping for the wall. She turned and watched him, knowing without question where he was going: the empty bedroom with the desk and ink and quills beneath the window. The room he had made for Thomas to share with him, an echo of that neat, orderly little room he had occupied in London.

In silence, she went to the mantle and lifted down a candle. The torn scraps of the letter were curling to black wisps in the grate and it only seemed fitting that she lit the candle from one of them. She cupped her hand around the flame and walked through the dark little house to the room.

James was sitting on the edge of the bed. He was rigid, his hands resting on his thighs, and by the light of the candle, she could see the tracks of tears shimmering on his cheeks. He was silent, but that was always his way: either raging and bellowing or retreating to mutely lick his wounds. There was no middle ground, and now, with the gravest wound of all, she knew there were no words that could help.

She set the candlestick down on the table beside the wall and approached him. He didn’t move. He scarcely even seemed to notice she was there, until she gently pushed his knees apart and stepped between them. The flickering candleflame cast his features in sharp relief when he lifted his face to look at her. She knew her tears – tears she thought spent – were flowing again.

Silently, James lifted his arms and wrapped them around her waist, pulling her closer. When he buried his face in her chest, when she pressed her lips to his hair, she knew that what they felt could not be put into words. They could not comfort one another for there was no comfort to be had. Thomas was _dead_. Good, kind, gentle loving Thomas who had wanted nothing more than a better world driven to madness and suicide all because he had dared to be true to himself.

James’s arms were tight around her and she curled her fingers into his hair. He flinched then, and she remembered with painful clarity their journey, the blade, the first time he had broken in front of her. She lowered her hands to his shoulders, gently pressing them and pushed back against his arms.

“A knife,” she said quietly. “As they did in Biblical times.”

For a moment, he seemed so dazed by grief that he didn’t understand, but then he did and nodded, catching her hands in his, drawing them close and bowing over to press his brow to them. When he drew one of them free, he pulled a knife from his belt.

“For him,” he said, his voice thickened and rasping. He held it up to her, shaking, and she nodded.

She took a lock of her own hair first. It fell between them like a strand of silk. It felt like nothing, such a meagre way to mourn such a good man. She reached for James’s hair instead. It was matted with salt, tangled, but the blade was sharp. It felt right as she sheared it away. Thomas had loved his hair, she remembered. Thomas had loved him, as she loved them both, and now, they only had one another and his memory tangled in James’s salted hair. Her eyes were burning and she blinked hard.

James lifted his hand to her cheek, catching the tears as they fell.

She had to brace her hand against his shoulder, her legs trembling beneath her. If the day came when Captain Flint did not return, she knew this would be how she would remember him. If she fell, if he outlived her, how would he remember her? How would he mourn? How could he live alone?

The knife slipped from her fingers and fell onto the bed. She fell down to her knees and pressed into his embrace again. He was sobbing and so was she. They clung to one another as if it was the end of the world. And in a way, it was.

 

_______________________________________________

 

Charlestown had fallen.

Miranda would rest in the ruins of the city. It had burned, as she had wished. All that Peter had won with his betrayal was gone in smoke and fire. It would be a warning and a reminder to England that their civilised world, built on degradation and shame, could still be destroyed.

In the days that followed, James had no time to grieve. Ships gave chase and with Vane at his side, they fought. Nassau had to be protected from the oncoming British fleets. If Nassau fell, then all of it – Thomas, Miranda, even Peter’s deaths – would have been in vain. 

The gold was another factor. They needed it more than ever to defend themselves against the inevitable onslaught. The destruction of Charlestown would bring the Navy to their port seeking retribution. They had the means to rebuild and to defend. He, Vane, Billy and Silver spoke – argued – and when they finally reached land, they went to the brothel and its proprietors. 

James didn’t speak. He had no time for words, not with Rackham, when the man puffed and preened as if he was more than a thief with a ship. He tried to focus on Vane’s words, trusting the man to say what needed to be said, but his mind kept drifting. A shot. A spray of blood and bone. Miranda’s eyes glassy and wide and empty.

He had never had the luxury of saying farewell. Thomas had been swept away from him, and that had seemed like the worst way to lose someone. He had believed that until he saw her there, laid out, derided and still and nothing of the woman he had known and loved for so long. 

She deserved so much better than what he had given: eternally chasing the shadow of the man they both loved, right until the end. He had almost given his life for Thomas’s legacy again, almost, without knowing he was handing himself to the very man who had condemned them.

So he said nothing. He stood silent and still at Vane’s back, arms folded. That alone would give Rackham and his crew pause: Vane trusting Flint at his back. Flint standing and letting him speak. Good. There was no time for fucking around.

A truce was brokered. Billy spoke for the crew of the Walrus. Silver’s word was given. More and more speaking and James didn’t give a shit. They were in some kind of agreement and they were going to defend Nassau. That was what mattered and he couldn’t give a shit about the details, not when he saw blood and bone and the life leave her.

He walked out without waiting for them to finish. Heard muffled exclamations and Vane’s snarl to shut the fuck up. Vane had seen him in the city. Vane knew what he was capable of. Maybe he thought James would turn a blade on anyone who misspoke. Maybe he would have. 

The word had spread through Nassau. People stepped out of his path, stared at him as he went by. He ignored them, seeking out the stables and his horse. 

They had only been gone a handful of weeks and as he galloped towards the house, it looked as if nothing had changed. When he dismounted, for a moment he could almost believe that when he opened the door, she would be waiting for him, that familiar half-smile of impatient amusement curling up her lips.

The door swung in with a creak. James stood on the threshold. All he had to do was step across the threshold. He had done it a thousand times, but this time…

This time, he was coming to a home that wasn’t home anymore.

He pressed his hand to the door until his palm ached. This was all she wanted. A home. Both of them safe and content and far from the sea. No more vengeance. No more violence. Just them, their books, and the weight of Thomas’s shade turned into a beloved memory. Such a simple life. He could have given it to her a thousand times over in all the years they had lived there. After Alfred, he could have stopped, and they could have lived and been happy.

He forced himself into the house, one foot before the other.

A cup and saucer were still sitting on the table, half-full. The chair was pushed out as if she had risen in a hurry. Abigail Ashe, he thought, touching the back of the chair. This was where she had heard about the girl. The house was frozen in the moment that led to her death.

He moved to push the chair back in, then hesitated. Like a knife and a ponytail. If he moved it, he undid the final thing she did in this house. If he undid it, then she was gone, and if she was gone, then this was just a house and nothing more.

The sun was casting slices of bright light across the floor. It felt too bright and warm and empty. A shell now. A body without a soul. James turned in a numb circle on the floor. She wasn’t here to greet him. She wasn’t here to chastise or smile or tease him. Her chair was empty. Her smile was…

He couldn’t remember. He thought of her and he saw blood and bone and her smile, that smile that he had thought unforgettable was gone. He half-staggered to their bedroom, pulling aside the cover on the only thing he had left of either of them: the painting that they had kept hidden, their secret, his lovers.

James fell to his knees, pulling the frame towards him. She wasn’t smiling. Neither was Thomas. He keened, pressing his brow to the frame. They had always laughed and smiled together. When things were difficult, those little smiles were a balm. Christ, the thought of life without Thomas had almost destroyed him. Miranda had held him up, reminded him who he was, helped him to smile again, and now, her smile was gone too.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know what he was apologising for. All of it. Any of it. For walking into their lives. For getting caught up in the joy and pleasure of their company. For losing all sense and reason when he was with them. For loving them and in doing so condemning them both to brutal and merciless deaths.

He groped for the knife at his belt. 

As they did in Biblical times, she had once said to him. The night he learned Thomas was…

She was too, now.

His hands were shaking as he grabbed hanks of his hair, cutting it away, letting it fall. Not just a little this time. A little meant nothing. Now they were both gone and he had nothing left he could give them, no gesture he could make but this. He cut and cut. The blade scratched and stung against his scalp and there was blood. He could feel it run down his cheek, dripping onto his shirt. Let it bleed. It was only pain. He could survive any wound. He had a thousand times before.

By the time he was done, there was nothing left but stubble. He ran his fingers over it. It rasped against his skin. England had taken everything from him. England had destroyed everything that was good about him. James McGraw was dead. He had sickened and weakened when Thomas was taken from him, but the moment that the bullet struck Miranda, he had died as if it had struck him. There was nothing left of him. He had been cut away and all that remained was Flint.

James reached out and pressed his palm to the portrait, tracing the outline of those beloved faces. They were gone, but he could not and would not let them die for nothing. England would get what it deserved, vengeance for two of the best and brightest that it had slain out of malice and spite.

“I’ll see you soon,” he promised. 

When he rose and walked from the house, he never looked back. It would never be home again.


End file.
